COMMON THINGS. Prayer for Common Things. Give me, dear Lord, Thy magic common things, Just daisies, knap-weed, wind among the thorns, Then when my feet no longer tread old paths Write one old epitaph in grace-lit words "Such things look fairer that he sojourned here.” ANONYMOUS. The Common People. I believe in the people-the average common sense and capacity of the millions-in government of, for and by the people. The most of the people mean right, and in the end they will do right.-Wendell Phillips. Relief in Common Things. Sometimes the troubled tide of all the past Of human grief and wrong, are on me cast. Upon a verge that takes some flood-tide vast. Then comes relief through some dear common thing— The voices of the children at their play, The wind-wave through the bright meadows, moving fast; The blue-bird's skyward call, on happy wing; So the sweet present reassumes her sway; EDITH M. THOMAS. The Common Courtesies of Life. What silences we keep, year after year, And speak of myriad things, but seldom say Martyrs of Common Life. In their midst I saw Some who appeared more radiant than the rest, For Christ gave up their bodies to be burned, Or bowed their necks unto the murderous sword; Not less a martyrdom in Jesus' eyes— For His dear brethren's sake, watching the couch Or visiting the captive in his cell, Or struggling with a burden not their own BICKERSTETH. CONSCIENCE. God Revealed in Conscience. I claim it to be the fact of experience (if you doubt, will you try the scientific method of experiment on this subject?) that whenever we submit utterly, affectionately, irreversibly, to the best we know that is, to the Innermost Holiest of Conscience-at that instant, and never before, there flashes through us, with quick, splendid, interior, unexpected illumination, a Power not ourselves. The image of the star or a representation of the sun is found within the chambers of the poor, feeble instrument. You can not have that inner witness until you have that exterior and interior conformity to Conscience; but whoever has these will know by the inner light that God is with him in a sense utterly unknown before.JOSEPH COOK. Remorse. The mind that broods o'er guilty woes One, and a sole relief she knows. The sting she nourished for her foes- Or live like scorpion girt by fire; So writhes the mind remorse has riven, Hardening Conscience. The first film of ice is scarcely perceptible. BYRON. Keep the water stirring, and you will prevent the ice from hardening it. But once it film over and remain so, it thickens over the surface, and it thickens still. At last it is so solid that a wagon might be drawn over the frozen water. So with our conscience. It films over gradually, and at last it becomes hard, unfeeling; and then it can bear a weight of iniquity.-BISHOP SIMPSON. CONSECRATION. Self-Surrender. Nothing is clearer than the fact that the Christian gets power from God in exact proportion to the extent of his self-surrender. The reason of this is obvious. It comes to pass by the action of a necessary law. In the human body the privation of any one of the senses intensifies the power of those that remain. If, for example, the sight is lost, the touch and taste become more acute It is exactly so among the three factors of our life-body, soul and spirit. Whatever any one surrenders is carried over to the credit of the others, and innures to their strength. "As the outward man perisheth, the inward man is renewed day by day."-A. J. GORDON. How to Make Life Admirable. The heart given to our Father; the hand given to our brother; the life given to both-truly this makes life admirable J. G. HOLLAND. |